


Ritual

by Limitlxss



Series: Commander Cloud Glimpses [4]
Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Gen, Gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-08
Updated: 2015-08-08
Packaged: 2018-04-13 16:48:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4529595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Limitlxss/pseuds/Limitlxss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are a great many things that Angeal doesn't know about his commander. Strange habits in the wake of combat are just some of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ritual

Angeal was developing a particularly bad habit of stumbling upon or deliberately seeking out things that he was probably not supposed to see; or at least Cloud would have preferred that he had not seen. That evening was another example of it.

 

With night falling the fighting had died down and Cloud the commander had ordered his squad to make camp back amongst the trees to give them a little cover and hide them amongst the brush that rose from the ground. The blond knew what he was doing since although it made it harder to set up camp, their camouflage was second to none and being so close to the front lines meant that it had to be close to impenetrable.

 

Normally the blond would stay and help make camp with them, pulling his weight along with the rest of them, asking nothing of them that he wouldn’t or wasn’t doing himself, but that evening the commander had left them to their task and disappeared amongst the trees without another word.

 

Knowing the blond’s rituals for the dead and his respect for them be they enemy or friend, Angeal suspected that he was going to lay them out for burial when there was time for them to be interred or for their enemy to collect the bodies for their own burial rituals when hostilities had ceased.

 

Nobody had asked the commander where he was going, they all knew better than to do so but once their camp was made and everyone had settled in, the raven decided that he’d give Cloud a hand.

 

What he saw shocked him.

 

Back at the scene of their latest combat, Cloud had already lined the bodies up neatly in the shade of a tree but it wasn’t that which stunned the raven into immobility. It was the fact that the blond was crouched over the body of a fallen chocobo, one of those ridden by their opponents and in the commander’s hand was the bird’s heart, crimson lifeblood dripping into the grass from his slicked hands. Beside him in the grass was the wickedly sharp little knife the blond had used to cut the bird open, bright with blood in the flickering orange light of the torch that Cloud had stabbed into the ground beside him.

 

As Angeal watched, the blond said something quietly enough that he could barely hear it even with his enhanced hearing, holding the heart up for a moment as he did so.

 

The whole situation had a weirdly ritualistic feel to it, something that was a bit unsettling to the watching raven. It was what happened next that really made him wonder just who his mentor, his commander, his  _crush_ really was.

 

Before the SOLDIER’s eyes, Cloud brought the heart to his mouth and began to consume it, one bite at a time. His expression was neutral as he did it but the way he swallowed around it made the raven think that it was as unpleasant to eat it as it was to watch someone do it. Even worse, the heart of a chocobo, a creature renowned for its speed and strength, had a pretty big heart and it took the blond several unpleasant minutes to finish the whole thing.

 

It was the odd, nasty and decidedly audible turn Angeal’s stomach did that alerted Cloud to his onlooker and the blond looked momentarily frustrated. With the blood around the commander’s mouth, the look was particularly disquieting. For a moment it seemed as though the blond was about to bring the sizeable muscle back up too, which only twisted Angeal’s stomach into knots even further.

 

Their eyes met for a moment before Cloud returned his attention to the fallen and now heartless bird, placing a glistening hand on the rumpled feathers of its flank and closing his eyes. Once again he spoke words that the raven couldn’t make out from where he was stood and although he could see the motions he couldn’t make out the shape of the words, if they were even words to start with, that Cloud painted in sticky blood onto the feathers around the incision he’d made.

 

After a few more words, Cloud rose from the body and moved away from it to wash his hands with water from his canteen; something that Angeal would have considered a waste when they were on deployment and there was no guarantee that they could refill their water stores with any frequency. After drying his hands and wiping his mouth on a rag that the raven hadn’t realised the blond was carrying, the commander began moving in Angeal’s direction and he paused beside the bigger man before looking over his shoulder.

 

“You can look if you want,” he invited quietly, his voice neutral. Angeal knew though that even if he did take a closer look he wouldn’t understand what he’d just witnessed. Something told him that even if he’d heard what the commander was saying he wouldn’t have understood that either.

 

The power he’d seen Cloud displaying in combat. The strange ritual he’d just been witness to. Were the two connected? What would Sephiroth have thought of the whole thing if he’d been there in Angeal’s place?

 

He was so caught up in his thoughts that he didn’t realise that the blond had continued past him and that he was alone, stood in the fading light of dusk with only the sight Cloud had left behind and the soft sound of the forest nightlife around him for company.

 

He lingered a little longer, torn between sating his curiosity and respecting his commander’s privacy. On one hand he was both intrigued and disturbed by what he’d seen but on the other hand, not only would it be an invasion of the blond’s privacy but after what he’d seen, he suspected that he would have even more questions than he already did if he went to inspect the markings made in blood. It had to have been a ritual of some kind, of that he had no doubt, but why? What was it for? Gaia above his mind was buzzing with questions but he wanted to respect Cloud’s privacy.

 

It took no small amount of restraint to turn his back on the scene but after another moment’s hesitation he began following his enigmatic commander’s path back to camp.

 


End file.
